Unheard By Men
by Sullen Siren
Summary: The story of Nada and Kai'ckul, as told by the women of the tribe. (From the prelude to A Doll's House)


  
  
  
  
  
  


Author's Note: This is my first foray into Sandman fanfiction. I'm a massive fan of Neil Gaiman's novels and short stories, and have read every one that I know of. I always wanted to try Sandman, but was a little daunted as I'd never been a comic book reader before, and wasn't certain I could enjoy the format. Finally I got the first two Sandman graphic novel collections for Christmas, and decided to give it a shot. Needless to say, I handled the new format just fine. I LOVED them, and found them beautiful, deep, and disturbing as all hell. Which is good.   
  


The prelude to A Doll's House intrigued me. What WAS the story as it was told to women? Did they know of the vengeance of Morpheus, how he condemned his love to Hell? This story came out of that. I've not read any further than The Doll House, so have no idea how the Sandman books continue. I desperately want to read the rest, but don't have the money yet. So I'm making due with writing this little snippet and rereading the first two over and over. If anything in this story conflicts with later Sandman stories, I apologize. Haven't read 'em, so can't know if I'm stepping on toes. Hope you enjoy this.   
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  


The hearts of men in their youth are ruled by curiosity, which is but Desire masked in a guise of learning. And Desire is a slick, sliding, silky thing that invades the heart and mind.. It makes you want, and then crave, and finally need. He needed to know. He was nothing in the way of the world, just a man who'd once been a child - like any other of his tribe. He held no great importance. He was content to live out his life - to hunt, and marry, and die, like all things must in the end. Yet he burned with his need.   
  


On the day he'd been called a man, when the blood had run down his legs and he'd lost the skin of childhood, he'd heard the tale of the Glass Desert and the city that had fallen. He had listened, as all young men of his tribe did on the first day of their manhood, as his grandfather told him the story of Nada and Kai'ckul. And he had listened, feeling a strange despair for the beautiful queen and her doomed love. When the sound of his grandfather's voice stopped, the story had died away. He had demanded an ending. How then, had Nada responded to Kai'ckul of the Endless? His grandfather had told him no man knows, but that she must have refused the Lord of Dreams again. He'd said that there, on a final question, ended the story for every generation of their people's young men. Perhaps he could have been content then, had his grandfather not told him of the women.   
  


But his grandfather had not gone silent. He had spoken of the women of their tribe, who told the story to their daughters when the first moon-blood came upon them. He'd said that they spoke the language of women, which men-children are not taught and old men are too wise to learn. He said that no man knows the story they tell, but perhaps in their tale the question is answered.   
  


He had heard and Desire had taken home in his heart. The years had passed and he had never forgotten. He hunted and loved and married. He gave his wives sons and daughters, and a year ago he had watched as his father led his eldest son, still sore and bleeding, into the desert to tell him the story. All of this was proper for a man. Yet he was not proper. In his dreams a black raven spoke in the voice of a man, and warned him that his path was ill conceived. But he did not listen. Instead he had listened to his women, hidden in the shadows as his wives taught the secret language to their daughters. He had learned the sounds and trills that created a language of nuance and music. And tonight his daughter would learn the story from her mother. And he would listen. At last, he would know.   
  


As the sky begin to darken he found a shadowed spot beside the woman's tent and pressed his ear to the faded hide, smiling as the voices within began to trill and speak in a language he was not meant to understand.   
  


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Far away in a palace of flesh, Desire smiled from within the red walls of their realm's heart.   
  


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The mother smiled as her daughter, heavy-headed from embarrassment and pale with cramps, settled herself on the grass-woven rug. Tonight she would sit with her child and tell her the tale of the Glass Desert. Together they would sit through the long hours of the night as her daughter's moon-blood seeped into the rug. At dawn they would burn it together, an offering to the gods that they would grant prosperity and health to her daughter's life. Then mother and daughter would part as she returned to her husband's tents and her daughter went to sleep with the unmarried maidens until a warrior offered for her. Tonight they were mother and child, tomorrow they would be two women. It was a time of joy, but the mother could not help the twinge of sadness she felt in the parting. It was, she supposed, a mother's burden to smile when her heart was heavy with the leaving. She would bear it. Tomorrow, she would go to her husband for comfort and weep for her loss, but tonight she would be a strong guide to her daughter.   
  


The daughter studied her mother, who sat calmly in the dim glow of the candlelight. Softly, her voice uncertain still with the cadences of the woman's tongue, she spoke. "Tell me what it means to be a woman, mother."   
  


The mother took her daughter's hands in her own and smiled. "It means maiden, mother, and crone. It means home and humility. It means pride and power. It means death and loss. To be woman is to be life. From woman come all men, and from our pain comes their strength. It means secrets hidden beneath the skin and held sacred. To be woman is to hurt, daughter. To be woman is to endure. To be woman is to live in a way men never will. This is why we speak in words they cannot understand. We shelter them from seeking secrets that they cannot divine the nature of." The woman's voice was steady and sure over the words, her mind wandering back to the night her mother had spoken them to her.   
  


"And if I cannot be all of that?" The daughter's voice was growing stronger, more confident as the long-memorized speech flowed from her lips.   
  


"Be what you can child. Each of us fills our space and lives what we are meant to. Do all that you can, and it will be enough." The mother drew her hands away. "Now still your tongue and listen, as I tell you the tale all women hear at their first moon-blood, and all men hear at their manhood. No man must hear what is said, for their story ends where ours does not, and it's true end is meant for the ears of women alone. This daughter, is the first of your secrets. Listen well and hold it in your heart."   
  


The daughter listened as her mother spoke of the city that had once been, and the paradise that had once flourished where their barren home now stood. Her mother told her of the queen who loved the King of Dreams and the destruction their love had wrought. She listened as her mother's voice trilled and sang through the notes of the woman's language as her first blood trickled down her thighs onto the rug beneath her. Her mother's voice continued through the young queen's death and refusal. She listened, mesmerized. ". . . And for the last time, he asked her to be his bride."   
  


The daughter was dismayed when her mother's voice halted. "But that is not the end! What did Nada say to that final request?"   
  


Her mother hushed her with a stern look. "This is where the story finishes to the men of our tribe. The rest is known only to we who are female. It is the ending, and it is truth. The weaverbird who first led Nada to Kai'ckul felt great sorrow at her death and the destruction of her city. One night the bird slept, and dreamt of Nada, and she told him the true end of the tale. She bade him carry it to the remnants of her people, that they might learn from her mistakes. To the men she granted the story you have just heard. But it was to women that she told the weaverbird to carry the end of the tale. And when the bird awoke, he did as she had asked. It is why our language borrows its tones from birdsong, daughter, to honor and remember that bird." She paused again, savoring the eager light in her child's eyes. Neither knew of the listener who stood outside, his ear pressed to the tent as tears of eagerness glittered in his eyes.   
  


"The end the bird spoke was this. Nada knew that to accept was to bring greater suffering to the world, and to refuse again was to bring it upon herself. She was brave and good, but she was human as well, and she could not bring herself to refuse him again. She said nothing, and the silence stretched for centuries within The Dream Plains, where time moves as it pleases. But even the patience of the immortal has limits, and Kai'ckul grew tired of her silence. He demanded an answer. And when she would not give one, he grew angry and the pain in his heart turned him vengeful. For her silence, he condemned her to suffer the torment of the Below-lands, where the fire burns and demons whisper the evils of your soul in your ear as they eat your flesh." The mother turned sad eyes on her daughter. "And there she still dwells, awaiting the forgiveness of he who sentenced her."   
  


Outside the tent the listener's breath caught in his suddenly tight throat.   
  


Tears shimmered in the eyes of the daughter, and she fixed them pleadingly on her mother. "Why must we hear such a story, my mother? What must her suffering teach us?"   
  


The mother smiled sadly. "Nada suffers for love child. This is the oldest lesson, one granted to women because our eyes see more than men's, who must focus their being on different thoughts. Soon you will be wed, my daughter. Seek a husband whom you can hold in your heart, but seek not the passion and fire of love. Love is a mask of desire, child. And from desire rises all the evils of mankind. It is an illusion. Seek happiness in peace and life, in children and quiet. And when Kai'ckul brings you dreams of love, remember that it was he who sent his love to the Below-lands to burn."   
  


The daughter ground her tears away with a fisted hand. She straightened her back and tucked her sadness away in the secrets place of her heart. Her mother smiled, a look of pride and affection on her weathered features. The daughter hesitated, before asking a final question. And when she spoke, her voice held, for the last time, the tentative and innocent tones of a child. "Mother . . . if Kai'ckul loved her, how could he do that to her?"   
  


The mother reached forward and clasped her daughter's hand. "True love, the kind that burns at the heart and tears at the mind- that love is made of the same stuff as hate. When anger flares and love is thwarted, it becomes hate. Kai'ckul loved her, but perhaps he hated her, too, for being born mortal, for refusing him, for forcing him to love her at all. None can know their minds, child."   
  


Her daughter sighed, and the softness of childhood fell away. "Why can the men not know this?"   
  


Behind the flap of the hide tent, the listener wept, cursing his own folly. But still he listened, dreading the answer.   
  


The mother smiled. "Men must believe in illusions child. They cannot see how thin the lines between happiness and despair, love and hate, and life and death are. They believe that Nada lives now in the Lands of Grace, dreaming of the love she lost, but content in her choice. We must know that is not so. It is the duty of women to keep such tragedy from happening again, child. That is why we know, when men do not."   
  


The daughter nodded, and smiled slightly. There was a wisdom in her gaze that had not been there before, and a gentle melancholy hovered around her. But her hands clasped her mothers, and she finished her part. "All that has been said shall be held in the secrets place, my mother. Tomorrow we will part. I thank you for my life, and for my secrets."   
  


"All are freely given child. Live and be happy." The mother leaned forward and kissed her child's head.   
  


Outside the tent, the listener fled, his sobbing soft at first but slowly building to echoing wails that roused the village. Only his wife and child, bound to their tent by tradition did not emerge. The eldest of the tribe came to the listener's side. The listener raised his head and tears flowed from his eyes to the ground. "Eldest, I have broken the law. I have listened to the voices of my women as they shared the story of the Glass Desert with ears that understood their tongue. But Old One, we have been lied to." In fractured words and despairing sighs he told the story men were not meant to hear. Many fled, covering their ears and roaring their outrage to those who stayed, and some did stay. And they heard. Slowly it spread from them, until there was no male - child or man - who did not know the story and weep for the ending they had never longed to hear. That night the men slept, and their dreams were wracked with images of a burning queen, and a black raven who sat on the arm of a man with eyes like burning stars. And the raven shook his head and told them that all knowledge was not meant to be known as the black haired man stared at them with something that looked like pity, but might have been regret.   
  


Only one did not sleep. He who had listened wept and stared into the rough glass of his wife's mirror. Within the glass a face he could not see lingered beside his own, full gray-skinned face set in a smile that did not belong on the somber features. When the sun began to creep over the horizon, he went once again to the Glass Desert. With a heart shaped shard that may well have been the same one he'd clutched in his youth he slit open the veins of his arms and waited for sunrise.   
  


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Far away in a palace of flesh, Desire laughed and bowed low before a mask hung on the wall of the palace's gallery and spoke, sultry tones rife with mockery. "Even mistakes have merits, Big Brother."   
  


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In a garden somewhere, time passed as Destiny turned the pages of his book. Wars raged, men died, women gave birth, and creatures that had walked the earth faded into memory. Destiny watched as the Tribe of the Glass Desert faded slowly away. Despair gathered them one by one in her realm, and Death visited them with a frequency that foretold the end of their people. Destiny felt sorrow, but he kept turning the pages as the tribe faded into nothing.   
  


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In a barren, nearly empty desert two figures walked. They cast no shadows, and the eyes of the desert creatures did not follow them as they passed. They wore black and their skin was paler than the sand beneath their feet. The smaller of them led the way. She came to a stop beside a tent. From inside came the sound of ragged breathing. She sighed softly. The taller looked down at her, his expression unreadable. "This is the last of them?"   
  


She nodded. "Yes little brother. Years ago this woman's grandfather listened where he should not have, and condemned his people to extinction. Maybe it was meant to be so, no one can say. Well, Destiny could probably say but he would." She gave him a sideways glance. "Does that trouble you?"   
  


He said nothing, but followed her into the ragged tent. An old woman lay on a pallet, frail bones trembling with tiredness. He studied her, saw the weariness of her eyes. With a hint of sorrow, he observed echoes of another of her race that he had known in the bones of her face. "You think me harsh, sister?"   
  


She hesitated. "Perhaps Dream. But then no one can see the truth of your realm but you. To them, I am harsh and unforgiving. They say that Death is cold and unforgiving, and they cherish their dreams as gifts." She smiled suddenly, amusement in her eyes. "Maybe that gives me a slanted view of the proceedings. To each their own, you know?"   
  


He shrugged slightly. "I doubt my own decision at times. But still . . ." He said nothing else, but his sister touched his arm lightly and her smile was wide and cheerful.   
  


"You do not need to explain yourself to me little brother. I would have done things differently. But I am not you, and maybe it's you who was right." Death turned from him, and dismissed him from her thoughts. "Go then Dream. Find solace in your own realm. We will meet soon."   
  


Dream nodded, but he remained where he was. The old woman saw them now, her eyes widened as she looked up at them with recognition in her eyes. "It is time, then?"   
  


Death smiled, and there was a softness in her expression. "Yes old mother, it is."   
  


"I'm ready. This world holds no ties for me anymore." Death opened her arms and pulled the old woman into them as the soft sound of wings filled the small tents.   
  


Within a heartbeat, Dream was alone in the tent with the cooling body of the old woman. He glanced down at the body and bent to lift a tattered blanket from the floor beside her. He draped it over her. "Find peace, old mother." And then he returned to The Dreaming. 


End file.
